Rowman & Littlefield Publishers
Pages: 292
•
Trim: 6½ x 9½
978-0-7425-5329-3 • Hardback • December 2008 • $132.00 • (£102.00)
978-0-7425-5330-9 • Paperback • December 2008 • $60.00 • (£46.00)
978-0-7425-5728-4 • eBook • December 2008 • $57.00 • (£44.00)
Robert Knox Dentan is professor emeritus of anthropology at State University of New York at Buffalo.
Introduction: Writing Someone Else's Life
Chapter 1: Spotted Doves at War: The Praak Sangkiil
Chapter 2: Regrettable Undertakings: A Dirty Joke, a War, a Vacancy
Chapter 3: Responding to Terror: Intellectually, Emotionally, Spiritually
Chapter 4: Transforming Demons by Love and Surrender
Chapter 5: Ceremonies of Innocence and "Positive" Peace
Chapter 6: Freedom: Just Say "No"
Chapter 7: For Fear of Finding Something Worse: Raising Kids
Chapter 8: Juni Gone Astray
Chapter 9: Inconclusion
Dentan notes that '[e]thnographies are mountains and endure, theories are mayflies and don't.' . . . Anyone, irrespective of discipline or area of specialization, who traverses this mountain will gain intellectually. Its methodology is refreshingly experimental and its theoretical orientation eclectic. The arguments presented are persuasive and compelling. The moral lessons conveyed in this elegantly and eloquently expressed ethnography are insightful, pertinent, and significant, particularly for those living in a world in which terror and violence prevail.
— Journal of Asian Studies
Overwhelming Terror, the product of four decades of research among Semai, demonstrates that Semai ways of life are not something rare and strange, but a continuation of the ways of successful ancient egalitarian societies. Robert Knox Dentan, applying lessons learned among Semai to contemporary American problems, succeeds admirably in a way that makes one proud to be an anthropologist.
— Carol Laderman, City College-CUNY